America wasn’t supposed to buy into the 68-team NCAA tournament field this fast, was it?

The cave-in to the coaches and conferences whining about lost bids and shrinking job security, that wasn’t supposed to be rewarded. The watering-down of the competition with three more barely-deserving at-large teams was supposed to be utterly unappealing to everybody whose paychecks didn’t depend on it.

The three extra first-round games, the “First Four” branding, the marketing of Dayton as a desirable destination for the extra straggler, the too-short break between Selection Sunday and the opening game, the disrupted symmetry of the brackets being filled out … none of this was supposed to work so smoothly or embraced this quickly.

Remember three years ago, when the very idea of adding on those three spots in the field was widely viewed as blasphemy, overkill, greed and self-interest run amok?

No. Of course you don’t.

This is the third time around for the field of 68, the third time for the two doubleheaders in Dayton, the third time that fans have to take a crash-course in filling out a bracket because an actual slate of games starts Tuesday instead of Thursday.

And it’s OK with everybody. More than that, it’s as if it’s always been this way. Even more, there’s real anticipation for Tuesday night, and there was as last weekend played out and the official selection of the field approached.

“Kentucky (or Ole Miss or Montana or South Dakota State) going to Dayton, how cool would that be?”

Fans were looking forward to the First Four. They’d even weaned themselves off the pejorative nickname the NCAA worked to eliminate from the March Madness vocabulary: play-in.

The good reasons: In Year One, 2011, a First Four team made the Final Four, VCU, maligned mercilessly by network talking heads the moment it got its at-large berth. Year Two, last year, brought a series of indelible moments, something unfathomable by pretty much everybody when the idea was conceived.

The first night had the two record tournament comeback wins, Western Kentucky over Mississippi Valley and BYU over Iona. The second night had South Florida, ridiculed for a seeming gratuitous bid from the bloated Big East, dominating a Cal team perceived as much more deserving.

Also last year, President Obama showed up on the first night in Dayton, not a small stamp of approval.

As for this year, sitting in the First Four field is the lightning-rod at-large pick of this tournament, 11th-seed Middle Tennessee State. It’ll do, especially since the prospect of the defending national champ or the individual-player lightning rod (that would be Marshall Henderson of automatic-bid Ole Miss) won’t be there.

So yes, there’s reason to watch, not just to check in and see which 16th-seed survives to get roasted by Louisville or Indiana.

Of course, the NCAA was banking on the public giving itself a reason to watch, no matter how loud or strident (or sensible) its objections were. It knows precisely the level of hunger for the tournament, and always has. It knows exactly how to feed it. Mostly, it knows that it can feed that hunger with anything, no matter how bland, and the public will beg for more.

Adding three teams to the field was the carrot. Adding 31 was the stick. The NCAA and all its important co-conspirators pushed a 96-team field hard. The coaches really went all-in for that, to the surprise of absolutely no one.

Throughout that 2010 postseason, back in the prehistoric days of the 65-team bracket and single first-round game, the powers-that-be floated that “96” number. There was a new TV contract on the table, the stakes were high, and they needed to see how far they could take it.

The answer, practically unanimously, was that they could take it a little further, but not that much further. Not now, and no time soon. That annual bubble for 34 at-large spots was getting softer all the time anyway. The one for 37 spots was even worse.

This year was the worst of them all. This might be a record for fewest legit beefs about the left-outs, the least-frequent and needed use of the term “snub.” Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Maryland … snubbed? Please, spare us all.